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THE Ghl^EAT CONSPIRACY. 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT 



MT. KISCO, WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK, 



On the 4th of July, 1861. 



V* THE EIGHTr-FIFTH AIJNIVEKSAKT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 



BY JOHN JAY, ESQ. 



NEW YORK: 
JAMES G. GREGORY, 

(SUCOKSSOR TO W. A. T0WN8END & CO.,) 

46 WALKEE STEEET. 
1801 



,1 

'Tfl 



THE GREAT CONSPIRACY. 



Mr. Jay's Address. 



My Fellow- Countrymen : — 

We have assembled to celebrate the eighty-sixth birth- 
day of American independence, and we come together under 
circumstances that seem to make us contemporaries and co-actors 
as it were, with our fathers of the revolution. The crisis which 
they met, ard which their heroism decided after a seven years' 
war with Great Britain, again meets us face to face. The early 
scenes of their struggle for constitutional liberty, have found 
in our recent experience an historic parallel of even chronologi- 
cal exactness. 

The blood of Massachussetts, shed at Lexington on the 19th 
of April 1775, was not shed more gloriously than that of the sons 
of the same old commonwealth, who, marching by our national 
highway, to the defence of our common capital, were slain at 
Baltimore on the 19th of April, 1861. 

The midnight ride of Paul Revere, famed in history and song, 
rousing the sleepers as he passed to hasten to defend their coun- 
try, created no deeper emotion among the colonists of that day, 
than did our electric wires flashing far and wide the news of 
the assault on Sumpter and the massacre at Baltimore, and thrill- 
ing with a simultaneous burst of sympathy the loyal heart of 
the American people. 

On the 4th of July 1776, the congress that met in the state 
house at Philadelphia approved the solemn instrument that de- 
clared the independenceof the American colonies, and announced 
to the world the birth of a nation. Eighty-five years have rolled 
by : the actors in that eventful scene have long since gone to 



their graves : their names belong to history : their sons have 
grown to manhood and age and have followed them to the nnseen 
world : and we of the third and fourth generation occnpy the 
stage they trod, and represent the nationality which then was 
born. Eighty-five years of almost uninterrupted prosperity and 
unexampled growth ! eighty-five years of culture and experience 
in a century of progress such as the world has never seen before 1 
eighty-five years of thoughtful reflection on the character of the 
men who laid the foundation of our national glory and of the 
broad principles of right on which they based the edifice oi Ameri- 
can freedom I 

Those years have passed ; their results are written on the map 
of America, on the page of history, and to-day, the itli of July 
1861, the American congress convenes again at the call of the 
president at the capital bearing the name of .Washington, to 
meet the question, whether the republic is to be maintained in 
its integrity wiih the constitution proclaimed by Washington 
based on the will of the majority, or whether it is to be sundered 
and shattered by a defeated faction that sets at defiance the will 
of the people and would trample tiio constitution in the dust. 

If ever the spirits of the departed are permitted to revisit the 
scenes they loved, and hover like angels around the steps of their 
successors, wo may suppose that Hancock, and the Adamses, 
Sherman and Wolcott, Carroll and Livingston, Jefferson and 
Franklin, Robert and Lewis Morris, Wilson and Rush, and all 
their noble compeers, look down from heaven in this hour upon 
the Congress at Washington ; and God grant that the sturdy 
spirit which inspired the first Congress may equally inspire the 
last I 

" Whatever may be our fate," said John Adams, with prophetic 
vision, after the adoption of the declaration, — " be assured that 
this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure and it may cost 
blood, but it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick 
gloom of the present I see the brightness of the future as the 
sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. 
When we are in our graves our children will honour it. They will 
celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivities, Avith bon-fires, 
with illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, not 



of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, butoi ex- 
ultation, of gratitude and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the 
hour is come : all that I have, all that I am, all that I hope for in 
this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it, and I leave off as 
I began, that live or die, sink or swim, survive or perish, I am for 
the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing 
of God it shall be my dying sentiment, — Independence now, and 
independence forever !" 

The integrity and independence of our country are again in 
peril, and to-day the issue is with us. We come together now, 
not as in past years, to rejoice over a national domain bound- 
less in extent, peopled by countrymen differing, it may be, in 
their views and institutions, but united in loyalty and affection, 
at peace in their own borders, and with the great arm of the 
union protecting its citizens alike on sea or land, at home or in 
foreign climes. But we meet in sadness to overlook a divided 
Dation, and to listen to tne tramp of martial forces larger than 
ever before trod the soil of America : the one army bearing 
proudly aloft the stars and stripes, and keeping step to the music 
of the union \ the other grasping the banner of rebellion and 
the black flag of piracy, proclaiming death to the constitution and 
the union, and rum to the commerce of the republic. 

Several states, about one-fourth of our whole number, profess 
to have resumed their sovereignty and seceded, as they term it, 
from the federal union : and certain persons professing to act in 
their name, have extemporized what they call the Southern Con- 
federacy, elected a president, Jefferson Davis, and a vice-presi- 
dent, Alexander H. Stephens, organized an army, issued letters 
of marq[ue, and declared war on the people and the government 
of the United States ; and they have publicly announced, through 
Walker, the secretary of Davis, their intention of speedily seiz- 
ing our capital at Washington, with its national archives and 
muniments of titles 

To meet the rebel force arrayed against the capital, president 
Lincoln has called upon the loyal states, and at the word, fresh 
from the plough, the loom and the workshop, fresh from col- 
lege seats and the professor's chair, from the bar, the pulpit, 
and the counting house, fresh from every department of Ameri- 



can industry, the army of the union is in the field, and the 
Avorld awaits the impending crisis. Europe looks on with un- 
disguised and wondering interest, and Avhile France and Ger- 
many seem instinctively to appreciate our situation, the British 
cabinet and the British press have straiigely blundered, and 
have muttered something we do not understand, about " rights 
of belligerents," " a wicked war," and the " bursting of the bub^ 
ble of democrac}'." 

Such, in brief, is our position at home and abroad, and this day 
is destined to be memorable — perhaps as memorable in history 
as that which we have met to celebrate. The action of the con- 
gress now assembled will decide whether the national indepen- 
dence established against the united strength of the British 
empire in '76 is to fall ignominiously before the attacks of a 
rebel minority of our own countrymen in '61. 

It is to decide the question whether in the next century our 
descendants shall refer to the fourth of July as the forgotten 
birth-day of an extinct republic, or whether, when we shall sleep 
with our fathers and our children shall slumber by our side, 
their grandsons shall meet as we do this day to bless our memo- 
vies as we bless those of our revolutionary sires : to spread to 
the breeze from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on every hill side 
and in every valley, the flag of our union, the stars and stripes 
that we so proudly love, and join their voices in swelling the 
cry of Adams — "Independence now, and independence for- 
ever 1" 

While the great issue, the success or failure of the American 
experiment, the continuance of our union or its disintegration 
rests immediately with the president and with congress, it rests 
in an almost equal degree upon each one of us. The American 
people are at once citizens and sovereigns — the fountain and 
source of the supreme authority of the land, and to us the peo- 
ple, will our servants in congress naturally and properly look 
for guidance in this extremity. Already have you seen how 
fairly an honest executive represents the sentiments of the ma- 
jority of his countrymen, availing himself of their counsels, gath- 
ering strength from their energy and determination, and so di- 
recting the government that its action keeps time to the beat- 



ing of the national pulse. Already in response to the nation's 
call has the national government arisen in gigantic strength 
from the depths of imbecility to which it had fallen, to a posi- 
tion of grandeur, dignity and power, which has silenced the 
half uttered sarcasms of European declaimers about the inter- 
nal weakness ot popular institutions. 

Most of you — perhaps all of you — have made up your minds 
deliberately, intelligently and dispassionately in regard to your 
duty ; and it is a general and proper sentiment among us that 
this is a time for energetic action, not for discussion. But still 
as I am here, honoured by your appointment to say something- 
befitting the occasion, I think you will permit me, if indeed you 
do not regard it as my especial province, to speak frankly of our 
present duty ; to say something of the great theme which en- 
grosses the nation ; of which we think when we rise in the mor- 
ning and when we retire at night, as we go to our work and re- 
turn to our meals, when we open the morning paper for ne'^' . 
and close it for reflection, when we kneel at the family altar and 
by our own bed sides,- — the one great overwhelming subject, 
the issue of this rebellion, the destiny of our country. 

I can speak to you about it more familiarly, perhaps, than 
I should speak to strangers, for you are familiar with the whole 
matter, you know by heart the history of the revolutionary war 
in which the county of Westchester bore from the beginning 
so prominent a part, and from boyhood our thoughts and associa- 
tions have been intimately connected with the facts of our colo- 
nial dependence and the incidents that marked the struggle by 
which that dependence was at length terminated. Let me refer 
for an instant to some of the local memories which linger all 
around us. On the angle of Connecticut which juts into the 
State of New York, close by this town of Newcastle, stands 
the boundary rock, still bearing the initials " G. R.," brief me- 
mento of King George III., whose sovereignty over our fathers, 
loyal subjects though they were, and backed as was the crown 
by the armies of Great Britain, faded before the steadfastness 
of their resistance to unconstitutional usurpation. 

New York in '76 being selected by the British as the centrt. 
of their operations, commanding, as they did, the Hudson river, 



8 

and acting in connection with a force from Canada, their march 
into Westchester was designed to control the two principal 
routes to New England, by the way of Rye and Bedford, and so 
cut off the American army from its eastern supplies. Washing 
ton, penetrating their designs, skilfully conducted h-is forces 
northwardly from King's bridge, moving in a line parallel with 
the British, keeping a little in advance, facing them constantly 
Vv^th the Bronx in his front, the banks of the stream being for- 
tified in convenient places. 

I need not remind you of the battle of White Plains on the 
9^ih. October, 1776, where xVlexander Hamilton distinguished 
himself as a captain of artillery, nor of the heights of New- 
castle, to which Washington repaired after the battle. At Bed- 
ford, where we hold our farms under Indian titles bearing the 
mark of Katonah sagamore, that were confirmed by patent of 
Queen Anne, some houses were burned in '79 by lieut. colonel 
Tarlton, heading a detachment of the Queen's rangers, as related 
in his despatch to Sir Guy Carleton. At Poundridge and Hitch- 
ing's corner occurred bloody skirmishes. Then, there are near 
by us Mile-square, where the Americans kept a strong guard ; 
Pine's bridge, which served as tlie principal communication be- 
tween the hostile lines, and wliere Enoch Crosby, the West- 
chester spy — known to all readers of our great novelist as Har- 
vey Bicrh — commenced his career of secret service ; King's 
bridge, the barrier of the British lines on the Harlem river, 
commanded in New York by Lord Cathcart, where the cowboys 
made their rendezvous when they had plundered the surround- 
ing hills, and where a battle was fought between the Continen- 
tals and the Hessians. Indeed the whole of the " neutral 
ground," as pourtrayed by Fennimore Cooper, extending to the 
Croton, the banks of the Hudson, Northcastle and Salem, con- 
nected with the sad drama of Andre and the, till recently un- 
surpassed treason of Arnold, all abound with revolutionary inci- 
dents ; not forgetting Valentine's hill at Mile-square, where 
Washington was encamped in '76. Sir William Erskine in '78, 
and where in '82, as Mr. Bolton tells us. a grand foray was made 
with some 6,000 men by Sir Gny Carleton in person, attended 



9 

among other officers of note, by the young duke of Clarence, 
afterwards William the fourtli. 

Dwelling as you do amid scenes so suggestive, there should 
be no traitors in Westchester unless indeed, they are the des- 
cendants of the cow-boys and skinners, those pests of the Revo- 
lution, who were at once selfish, treacherous, cowardly, and cruel ; 
and if any traitors should again be found in our borders — ^men 
ready for their own selfish interests to betray either the nation- 
al principles, or the national integrity that our fathers bought 
for us at so great a price, do not forget to remin.d them that the 
" Cow-boy oak" yet stands near Yonkers, on which their traitor- 
ous ancestors were suspended with " a short shrift and a sure 
cord ;" and that equally patriotic oaks in every part of West- 
chester send forth their broad arms ready to perform for our 
country, should its safety at any time unhappily demand it, the 
same excellent service. 

You are familiar also with the history of our Constitution, and 
with those marked lines of distinction between the authority of 
the States and that of the Federal government, which to some 
of the statesmen and authors of England seem so difficult of com- 
prehension, and in regard to which, perhaps naturally enough, 
they occasionally fall into blunders, which unfortunately are not 
always as harmless as the droll liberties they are accustomed to 
take with our history, our geography, and our nomenclature. 

If ever the constitutional history of America shall receive in 
the education of English gentlemen a tithe of the attention be- 
stowed on the constitutions of Greece and Eome, or a share of 
that devoted to the fabulous heroes, the gods and goddesses of 
classic mythology, the British senate may occasionally find a 
famiharity with our institutions of no slight value, especially if it 
shall save them from rashly interrupting the cordial friendship 
of a kindred people. 

The universality of such knowledge here, makes us perhaps 
more ready to remark the want of it in foreign critics. Dr. 
Franklin said during the last century, and the progress of edu- 
cation and improvements in our newspapers have made the re- 
mark more true of the present than of the past,—" we are more 



10 

thoroughly an enlightened people, with regard to our political 
interests than perhaps any other under heaven." 

You remember that in 1774 the members ot the first congress 
at Philadelphia, on behalf of the colonies which they represented, 
entered into certain articles of association " under the sacred 
ties of virtue, honour and love of country." That in 1778 the 
states united in a confederacy, or what they called " a firm league 
of friendship with each other," under the title of the United 
States, and that under this league made by the states, they con- 
tinued until 1789, when, " in order to form a more perfect union" — 
not the states, but — " We the people of the United States" or- 
dained and established the present federal constitution. You 
remember that from the date of the peace in '83, when we were 
a mere league of petty sovereignties, we sank rapidly, in the 
words of Mr. Motley, whose conclusive essay in the London 
Times has enlightened Europe, "into a condition of utter impo- 
tence, imbecility and anarchy," which continued until we were 
rescued from it by " The constitution of the United States," 
which made us, in every sense, one nation — with one supreme 
government, although for convenience, we retained the plural 
title under which we had achieved our independence of " The 
United States." 

Any argument, therefore, addressed to you upon the constitu- 
tional right alleged by the rebels, of a state to secede from the 
union would be quite superfluous. Men have been allowed to 
talk of state sovereignty as it liked them, because ours is a free 
country and in ordinary times the utmost liberty of speech is 
permissible, but the doctrine has not even a respectable foothold. 
Washington, as if foreseeing the evil it has assisted to bring forth, 
denounced it as " that monster, state sovereignty." Webster and 
Jackson successively demolished it, and the argument now inso- 
lently advanced by leaders of the rebel states, that in seceding 
from the Union and seizing its property, they are only exercising 
their reserved rights under the Constitution, is one which to 
every intelligent and loyal American carries with it its own refu- 
tation. 

The man who attaches to it the Aveight of a feather, is either 



11 

singularly ignorant of American history, or liis reasoning powers 
are hopelessly perverted. 

The rebels, despite their pretended plea of constitutional right 
virtually admit its groundlessness, and fall back on the right o1 
revolution. That is a right which no American can deny, wher 
the causes of justification are sufficient. The simple cry of rebel 
and revolutionist has no terror for us who remember thai 
Washington and our ancestors occupied the position of both the 
one and the other. 

All then depends upon the reality and sufficiency of the as 
signed causes of this attempt at revolution. Are they such sa 
to justify the effort to break in pieces the American union? tc 
destroy this last experiment of popular government ? 

The arguments offered by the insurrectionists and their friends 
to shew that the federal government and the loyal states shoulc 
quietly allow them to depart and form a separate confederacy 
are these : 

That the rebellion or revolution is the act of the people oj 
those states exercising their sovereign will. 

That they have been compelled to this step in self defence hy 
the election of Mr. Lincoln, and the refusal of certain Northern 
states to fulfil the constitutional obligation of returnmg fugitive 
slaves. 

That the present position of the rebels, and the fact of their 
having ousted the federal government from its forts, and other 
property, exhibit their strength, make the revolution an accom- 
plished fact, and render the attempt to subjugate the Southern 
people utterly hopeless. 

That even if they were subjugated, harmonious feeling could 
never be restored, and that for these reasons, and especially the 
last, a war to marntain the integrity of the union would be alike 
wicked a-nd foolish. 

These, I believe, are their strong points fairly stated, and I will 
briefly state some of the grounds on which we believe them to 
be, one and ail, erroneous and delusive. 

In the first place, the fact is clear that the rebellion at the 
South was not in its inception like the rebellion of the American 
colonies, — a calm, deliberate, determined, movement of the pec 



12 

pie ; but that it was a conspiracy originating with a few ambi- 
tions pohticians, and was by them suddenly precipitated upon 
the people, whose right to pass upon their acts of secession has 
been purposely, systematically and practically denied. "There 
Is," said Webster, — and his words were never before so fearfully 
illustrated, — "no usurpation so dangerous as that which comes 
in the borrowed name of the people ; which calling itself their 
servant, exercises their power without legal right or constitu- 
tional sanction." 

You all remember the stern rebukes uttered by the Southern 
press, of the rash precipitancy of South Carolina, and the efforts 
made by their prominent statesmen, among whom Mr. Stephens 
was one, to stay the efforts of the rebel leaders to plunge the 
South into rebellion. Even after several states had by their 
conventions, — and the convention of Louisiana was elected by a 
a minority of the people — been declared out of the union ; and 
after delegates from those conventions had met in congress at 
Montgomery, and extemporized their new confederacy, the bolder 
part of the Southern press did not hesitate to denounce the 
usurpation. 

The " Augusta Chronicle and sentinel " — a leading paper of 
Georgia — openly declared th'" . the result had been produced by 
" wheedling, coaxing and buJying, and all the arts of deception." 
It said : 

•' We know as well as any one living that the whole movement 
for secession and the formation of a new government, so far at 
least as Georgia is concerned, proceeded only on a quasi consent 
of the people, and was pushed through under circumstances of 
great excitement and frenzy by a fictitious majority." And then 
passing to the Montgomery congress, it added : 

" The Georgia convention and the confederate congress have 
gone forward in their work, as none can deny, without explicit 
and direct authority from the people." * * * " It is time 
that this assumption of power should cease, and that the people 
should bo heard. Sooner or later they must be heard. * * * 
Before the convention assumes to ratify the permanent consti- 
tution let them submit it to a vote of the people — or else, let us 



13 

have an election for a new convention. For union — for harmony 
— for strength — we ask this simple act of justice." 

Simple justice was not the aim of Jefferson Davis and his co- 
conspirators. To this day the people of the South have been 
allowed no opportunity of passing upon the profoundest question 
that can affect a nation — the preservation or overthrow of its 
institutions; and the rebel government is an usurpation of the 
grossest kind, not only against the people of the United States 
in their sovereign capacity, but against the people of the States 
in whose name it assumes to act, and by whose will it pretends 
to have been established. 

The declaration, so solemnly made by the seceding conven- 
tions, appealing to the world for the justice of their cause, that 
Mr. Lincoln's election, the non-execution of the fugitive slave 
law, and the personal liberty laws of northern States, compelled 
them to separate from a government that threatened their dear- 
est rights, is equally disproven out of their own mouths. Listen 
to the following utterances from the very leaders of the rebellion : 

Mk. Rhett said : — "The secession of Soutli Carolina is not the event of a 
day. It is not anything produced by Mr. l^incoln or by the non-esecution of 
the fugitive slave law. It is a matter wuich has been gathering head for 
years." 

Mr. Parker. — "It is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us, 
but it has been gradually culminating for a long series of years." 

Mr. Kkitt. — I have been engaged iii this movement ever since I entered 
political life." 

Mr. Inqlis. — Most of ns have had this matter unaer consideration for the 
the last twenty years." 

That these declarations had a broad basis of truth, and that a 
plot to destroy the union has been hatching for a long period 
and has been deferred only until a convenient opportunity, is no 
longer a matter of speculation. The election of Mr. Lincoln 
was not the cause but only the occasion. Mr. Everett, in a re- 
cent letter said, that he was "well avv^are, partly from facts 
within his personal knowledge, that leading Southern politicians 
had for thirty years been resolved to break up the union as soon 
as they ceased to control the United States government, and 



14 

that the slavery question was but a pretext for keeping up agi- 
tation and rallying the South." 

The Richmond Enquirer in 1856, declared, " If Fremont is 
elected the union will not last an hour after Mr. Pierce's term 
expires," and a careful examination will shew that from the at- 
tempt at nullification- by South Carolina in 1832, which was de- 
feated by the stern determination of General Jackson that the 
" union must and shall be preserved,'* a sentiment that was en- 
thusiastically responded to by the country at large, the design 
has been secretly cherished, by a knot of conspirators at the 
South, of destroying the union whenever the men entertaining 
this design should no longer be able to control its government. 
So long as they could enjoy its honors and emoluments, and use 
its prestige, its treasury, its army and its navy for their own 
purposes, they were content that it should stand ; but the mo- 
ment these were wrested from their grasp by the will of the 
people, that moment the union was to be destroyed. 

So long ago as the year 1799 Judge Marshall in a letter to 
Washington, dated at Richmond, remarked : 

" To me it seems that there are men who will hold power by 
any means rather than not hold it, and who would prefer a disso- 
lution of the union to the continuance of an administration not 
of their own party." And Mr. Stephens declared in regard to 
tlie present conspiracy that the ambition of disappointed office- 
seekers constituted " a great part of the trouble. 

General Jackson, after the South Carolina rebellion of 1832 
was suppressed, foretold its attempted revival at no distant pe- 
riod, remarking that " the first time the pretence was the tariff, 
and that next it would be the negro question." 

In 1836, twenty-five years ago, a political novel called the 
*' Partizan Leader," was published by Professor Beverly Tucker, 
of Wilham and Mary College, in Virginia. It excited no sensa- 
tion then, but it possesses a singular interest now. It proceeds 
upon the theory that the events it describes as then happening 
would happen twenty years after, that is, in 1856, when Fremont 
would have probably been elected but for the frauds in Pennsyl- 
vania ; and it gives, with singular accuracy, the programme of 
the conspiracy which is now in progress. The author describes 



15 

the southern states as seceding; " by a movement nearly simul- 
taneous," and immediately forming a southern confederacy. Let 
me quote a single paragraph : 

'' The suddenness of these measures was less remarkable than 
the prudence with which they had been conducted. The two 
together left little doubt that there had been a preconcert 
among the leading men of the several states, arranging previ- 
ously what should be done. * * Nor was it confined to the 
seceding states alone. In Virginia also there were men who en- 
tered into the same views. * * Not only had they sketched 
provisionally the plan of a southern confederacy, but they had 
taken measures to regulate their relations with foreign powers.'' 

"What a flood of light is thrown upon the conspiracy by these 
few words from one of the earliest of the conspirators, who 
seems to have anticipated in part the role to be played by his 
own state of Virginia. 

There being indications of her ultimate accession to the con- 
foderacy, the author says : 

" The leading men" referred to " had determined to wait for 
her no longer, but to proceed to the execution of their plans, 
leaving her to follow." 

Could the acute novelist have anticipated the proceedings ol 
the pseudo-peace convention and the conduct of Virginia trai- 
tors, headed by an ex-President Tyler and an ex-Governor Wise, 
he might have eulogised the leaders of the ancient dominion for 
their treacherous skill in deluding the country with schemes ol 
compromise while the preparations of the rebels were advancing 
to completion. 

Mr. Everett, who was a warm advocate for the peace conven- 
tion, has told us that " those conciliatory demonstrations had no 
effect in staying the progress of secession, because the leaders ol 
that revolution were determined not to be satisfied." 

In reference to the measures referred to by Professor Tucker, 
looking towards the relations of the new confederacy with foreign 
powers, it may be worth while to allude to a recent statement, 
that in the days of Mr. Calhoun a plan for the dissolution of the 
union and the formation of a great slaveholding power, was 
presented by his friends to Lord Aberdeen, and that some words 



16 

attributed to that statesman, are supposed to have given rise to 
the hopes of British sympathy, in which soutliern politicians 
have so frequently indulged. It is said on high authority that 
at different times, and especially in 1851, these projects have 
been broached to members of the British ministry, and that on 
that occasion they were disclosed by Lord Palmerston to our 
minister, Mr. Abbott Lawrence, and that the southern commis- 
sioners disheartened by the coolness with which their overtures 
were received, and also by the fate of the Lopez expedition, re- 
turned discomfited to the United States. 

In 1857 Mr. Mason, '^of Virginia, announced as a fact, on the 
floor of the senate, that the British government had changed its 
opinion on the slavery question, but an early occasion was taken 
by that government to contradict the assertion of Mr. Mason, 
the Duke of Argyll declaring that he was instructed by her 
Majesty's ministers to do so.* 

Blind as we have all been to the catastrophe that awaited us, 
uncons'cious as were the people, both at the north and at the 
south, of this preconcert among ^ few leaders in the different 
states, we can now trace step b step the progress of the con- 
spiracy and read the history . the last thirty years without an 
interpreter ; we can understand the motive of the Texan rebel- 
lion, the war with Mexico, the persistent efforts to secure 
Cuba, the fillibustering expeditions to Central America and the 
determination to re-open the African slave trade. Wo can ap- 
preciate, too, the caution with which the plan of the rebellion 
was concealed, and especially the adroitness with which the peo 
pie were allowed no time for reflection, noopportunity for action, 
their consent assumed on the plea of necessary haste, and the 
acts of secession pushed through the conventions, as charged by 
the Georgian editor, with no regard to popular rights and under 
circumstances of excitement and frenzy, by fictitious majorities. 

The doctrine of secession, earnestly as it had been advocated, 
failed to convince the capitalists, the planters, and the common- 
sense statesmen of the South — even in South Carolina. 

A few years eince Mr. Boyce of that State, late a member of 



* See a letter dated London, December 10, 1858, published and endorsed 
by the Commeraal Advertiser, January 30, 1861. 



17 

the house of representatives, in an address to the people, after 
shewing that by secession they would k)se the vitahty of a state, 
that they \vould exist only by tolerance, a painful and humili- 
ating spectacle, that it would involve a sacrifice of the present 
■without in anywise gaining in the future, emidiatically declar- 
ed, " such is the intensity of my conviction on the subject, that if 
secession should take place, of which I have no idea, for I can- 
not believe in such stupendous madness, I shall consider the in- 
stitution of slavery as doomed, and that the great God in our 
blindness has made us the instrument of its destruction." 

Even so late as the autumn of 1860 and after the presidential 
election that announced the defeat of the slave power which had 
so long ruled the country, the leading men of the South who had 
not been in the plot battled manfully against it. On the 14th of 
November last, Mr. Stephens of Georgia, now the vice-president 
of the rebel confederacy, delivered a long and able speech in the 
Georgia house of representatives m which, in answer to the 
question whether the Southern states should secede in conse- 
quence of Mr. Lincoln's election, he said : 

" My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, 
that I do not think that they ought." 

Reminding them of the sacred obligation resting on them to 
be true to their national engagements, he exclaimed : 

" If the republic is to go down, let us be found to the last mo- 
ment standing on the deck, with the Constitution of the United 
States waving over our heads." And this sentiment was greeted 
with applause. 

He expressed his belief that Mr. Lincoln would do nothing to 
hazard their safety or security, and shewed them the wisdom of 
our system with its checks and guards. He reminded them that 
the president was powerless unless backed by congress — that 
the house of representatives was largely against him, and that 
there would be a majority of four against him in the senate, and 
referring to a remark that no Georgian, who was true to his 
state, could consistently hold office under Mr. Lincoln, remind- 
ed them that such office could be honorably held, for it would 
be conferred by the approval of a democratic senate — and this 
exposition was received with " prolonged applause." 



18 

Mr. Stephens frankly avowed that he would never submit to 
any republican aggression on their constitutional rights to pre- 
serve the union, but insisted that all their rights could be se- 
cured in the union, and emphatically declared, " That this gov- 
ernment of our fathers with all its defects, comes nearer the ob- 
jects of all good governments than any other on the face of the 
earth, is my settled conviction." * * "Have we not at the 
South, as well as at the North, grown great, prosperous, and hap- 
py under its operation ? Has any ^^art of the world ever shewn 
such rapid progress in the development of wealth, and all the 
material resources of national power and greatness as the South- 
ern States have under the general government, notwithstand- 
all its defects ?" 

Mr. Stephens then, with jihilosophic skill, shewed that the in- 
stitutions of a people constitute the matrix from which spring 
all their characteristics of development and greatness. " Look," 
he said, " at Greece. There is the same fertile soil, the same 
blue sky, the same inlets and harbours, the same Egean, the 
same Olympus ; there is the same land where Homer sung, 
where Pericles spoke ; it is the same old Greece — but it is living 
Greece no more." He pictured its ruin of art and civilization, 
and traced that ruin to the downfall fo its institutions. He 
drew the same lesson from Italy and Rome, once mistress of 
the world, and solemnly warned them that where liberty is once 
destroyed it may never return again. 

Coming back to the state of Georgia he referred to the anxi- 
ety of many there in 1850 to secede from the Union — and 
shewed that since 1850 the material wealth of Georgia, as a mem- 
ber of the Union, had nearly if not quite doubled. 

He spoke of the prosperity in agriculture, commerce, art, 
science, and every department of education, physical and mental, 
and warned thein against listening to the like temptation as that 
offered to our progenitors in the Garden of Eden — when they 
were led to believe that they would become as gods, and yielding 
in an evil hour saw only their own nakedness. 

" I look," he said, " upon this country, with its institutions, as 
the Eden of the world, the paradise of the universe. It maybe 
that out of it we may become greater and more prosperous ; but 



19 

I am candid and sincere in telling you, that I fear if we rashly 
evince passion and without sufficient cause shall take that step, 
that instead of becoming greater or more peaceful, prosperous 
and happy — instead of becoming gods, we will become demons, 
and at no distant day commence cutting one another's throats." 
There, my countrymen, we have the testimony of the vice-pres- 
ident of the rebel confederacy, and the fact that Mr. Stephens, 
like our progenitors of whom he spoke, yielded to temptation 
and became a chief abettor of the scheme of ruin which he so 
strongly deprecated, detracts nothing from the value of this re- 
markable speech. His treachery proves only his own weakness; 
it impeaches neither the truth of his facts, the aptness of his 
illustrations nor the conclusions to which he was led by his his- 
toric experience and irresistible logic. 

Already in South Carolina, first and chiefest of the seceding 
states, have men professing to be respectable, men whose names 
connect them in past generations, with Englishmen of gentle 
blood and Huguenots of heroic fame, men who for years have 
borne in foreign climes the proud title of American citizens, and 
who know the simple dignity of the American republic among 
the nations of the earth, — already are these men, since they 
discarded the protection of the federal government, so lost to 
self respect that they are not only ready to submit to a foreign 
yoke but, according to their eulogist, Mr. Russell, in a paragraph 
I will presently quote, they actually whimper like children for 
the privilege of becoming the vassals of an European princelet. 

We have glanced at the secret history of the conspiracy. 
Now, let me ask, on what ground does this usurping confederacy 
ask to be recognized as independent and admitted to the family 
of nations? 

In the convention of South Carolina, in reply to an objection 
that the declaration reported by the committee dwelt too much 
on the fugitive slave law and personal liberty bills, as giving it 
the appearance of special pleading, Mr. Memminger said : " Al- 
low me to say to the honorable gentleman, that when you take 
position that you have a right to break your faith, to destroy an 
agreement that you have made, to tear off your seal from the 
document to which it is affixed, you are bound to justify yourself 



20 

fullv to all the nations of the world, for there is nothincr that 
that casts such a stain upon tlie escutchc(M^. of a nation as a 
breach of faith." 

In this Mr. Memminger was clearly right, and the alleged breach 
of faith by the North, touching the execution of the fugitive 
slave law was resorted to as affording a plausible pretext for 
seceding from the union. But the debates shew that this pretext 
was a sham, and Mr. Rhett frankly declared that he regarded 
the fugitive slave law as unconstitutional, and that Mr. Webster 
and Mr. Keitt had expressed the same opinion. 

You have seen, too, from Mr. Stephens, that all the constitu- 
tional rights of the South were protected within the union — and 
that the South was indebted to the union for her safety, pros- 
perity and happiness. 

What then is the real ground on which the breach of faith 
committed by the seceding states is to be justified, if it can be 
justified at all ; on what ground is it recommended to the preju- 
dices of the South and to the impartial judgment of the world ? 

After secession was an accomplished fact, so far as their con- 
ventions could manage it by usurped authority and fictitious ma 
jorities, and Mr. Stephens had become not only a member but a 
prominent leader of the conspiracy, he said at Atlanta : 

"The foundations of our new government are laid, its corner- 
stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to 
the white man ; that slavery, subordination to the superior race 
is his natural and moral condition. This our new government is 
the first in the history of the world based upon this great physi- 
cal, philosophical and moral truth." 

Mr. Stephens enlarged upon this distinguishing characteristic 
of the government, to establish which the union was to be dis- 
solved, sneered at the principle that all men are equal, enunciat- 
ed by our fathers in the declaration of independence " as the 
pestilent heresy of fancy politicians " — declared that " African 
inequality and the equality of white men were the chief corner- 
stone of the southern republic!" and claimed that with a gov- 
ernment so founded " the world would recognize in theirs the 
the model nation of history." 

Here we have their only apology for this rebellion, stripped 



21 

of all shams and disguises, and thus at length in the latter half 
of the nineteenth century, stand face to face in deadly conflict 
the antagonist systems of the new world. 

" All men," said the founders of the American republic, " are 
created free and equal and endowed with certain inalienable 
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness." " Let it ever be remembered," said the continental con- 
gress, " that the rights for which we have contended were the 
rights of human nature," and on that foundation arose the fair 
fabric of our liberties. 

The dark shadow arises of another confederacy which Davis 
and Keitt and Floyd and Toombs are striving to establish on the 
ruins of the republic erected by Washington and Franklin and 
Hamilton and Jefferson, and the one great plea wi:h which this 
new power seeks to recommend itself to the Christian world, is 
the assumption that the white man was born to be the master 
and the black man was created to be his slave 

The attempt of the slavery insurrectionists to bring into con- 
tempt the great principle of the declaration of independence, 
and their characterizing the men who uttered it and the men who 
beheve in it as " fancy politicians," shews how absolutely antago- 
nist in their principles were those who rebelled in '76 against 
unconstitutional acts of parliament, and those who in '61 are re- 
belling against the constitution of the United States. Even in 
the august year which we are met to celebrate, the principles 
and reasonings of our fathers commanded the admiration of 
Europe, and called forth in the house of Lords that magnificent 
eulogy of Chatham, when he said that for himself he must de- 
clare that he had studied and admired the free states of an- 
tiquity, the master states of the world : but that for solidity of 
; reasoning, force of sagacity and wisdom of conclusion, no body 
"*of men could stand in preference to the congress of Philadel- 
phia. 

Whatever may be the future of America the past is safe. 

The confederates of the slave republic, unrivalled as may be 
their skill in robbing us of material we-alth and power, cannot 
rob the founders of our union of their glory — cannot filch from 
us the treasures we possess in their great principles, cannot lea- 



22 

sen by the tithe of a hair, the truth and force of their exam- 
ple. 

On the contrary, tlie formation of the Southern confederacy 
adds new proof to their farsighted and prophetic sagacity. 
Look at the rebel states, plunged into anarchy and war by Jef- 
ferson Davis, with a fettered press, free speech silenced, forced 
loans, and an army enlarged by conscription, and then listen to 
a single passage from William Finkney, the great orator of 
Maryland, which occurs in a speech made in the Maryland house 
of delegates, in 1789 : and remember as you listen to it the proof 
I have already given j'ou that the so-called Southern confederacy 
is a military despotism, extemporized and precipitated on the 
people of the South, who have never been allowed to express 
their will in regard to the substitution of the Montgomery con- 
etitution, for the ancient constitution and government which the 
confederates are striving to destroy. 

Said Mr. Pinkney : 

" That the dangerous consequences of the system of bondage 
have not as yet been felt does not prove that they never will be. 
* * To me, sir, nothing for which I have not the evidence of 
my senses is more clear than that it will one day destroy that 
reverence for liberty which is the vital principle of a republic. 

" While a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule 
with the authority of despots within particular limits, while your 
youth are reared in the habit of thinking that the great rights 
of human nature are not so sacred but they may with innocence 
be trampled on, can it be expected that the public mind should 
glow with that generous ardor in the cause of freedom which 
can alone save a government like ours from the lurl-wg demon of 
usurpation ? Do you not dread contamination of principle ? 
Have you no alarms for the continuance of that spirit, which 
once conducted us to victory and independence when the talons 
of power were unclasped for our destruction ? Have you no 
apprehension that when the votaries of freedom sacrifice also at 
the gloomy altars of slavery, they will at length become apos- 
tates from the former ? For my own part, I have no hope that 
the stream of general liberty will flow forever unpolluted through 
the foul mire of partial bondage, or that they who have been 



23 

habituated to lord it over others, will not in time be base enougl 
to let others lord it over them. If they resist it will be tht 
struggle o^ pride and selfishness, not o^ principled 

The hour so philosophically predicted seventy-two years ag( 
has come. The usurping hand is lifted against the most be 
nignant government the world has ever seen. The usurpatioi 
is unresisted, the country is precipitated into war : and populai 
government overthrown and a military rule established, the peo 
pie, it would seem, have cast to the world the historic memories 
we this day meet to celebrate. Mr. Russell, the corresponden 
of the London Times, now travelling at the South, treated witl 
every attention, charmed with their courtesy, and evidently in 
clined to regard their rebel movement with a favorable eye 
writes from South Carolina on the 30th April, and makes thii 
sad disclosure : " From all quarters have come to my ears th( 
echoes of the same voice ; it may be feigned, but there is no dis 
cord in the note, and it sounds in wonderful strength anr 
monotony all over the country. Shades of George III., of North 
of Johnson, of all who contended against the great rebellior 
which tore these colonies from England, can you hear the chorus 
which rings through the state of Marion, Sumpter anc 
Pinckney and not clap your ghostly hands in triumph? tha' 
voice says ' If we could only get one of the royal race of Eng 
land to rule over us we should be content.' " 

Let me say next a word of the means by which a conspirac} 
so contemptible in its origin, so destitute of moral weight and o: 
popular support has attained to its present dimensions, ousting 
the federal government of its jurisdiction in more than half ol 
our national territory to the East of the Rocky Mountains, anc 
obtaining possession of arsenals and navy yards and fortresses 
seventeen in number, which had cost the American people more 
than seven millions of dollars. 

On the 29th October, 1860, before the presidential election 
lieut. general Scott wrote a letter to president Buchanan in which 
he referred to the secession excitement which the leaders of the 
conspiracy were actively fanning at the South, and remarked, 
that if this glorious union were broken by whatever line politi- 
cal madness might contrive, there would be no hope of reuniting 



24 

the fragments, except by the laceration and despotism of the 
sword. Pointing out the dani^-er, he proceeded to jjoint out the 
prevention. 

" From a knowledge of our southern population," he said, " it 
is my solemn conviction that there is some danger of an early 
act of rashness preliminary to secession, viz. : the seizure of 
some or all of the following posts : Forts Jackson and Philip in 
the Mississippi, below New Orleans, both without garrisons ; 
Fort Morgan, below Mobile, without a garrison. Forts Pickens 
and McRae, Pensacola harbor, with an insufficient garrison for 
one ; Fort Pulaski below Savannah, Avithout a garrison ; Forts 
Moultrie and Sumpter, Charleston harbor, the former with an 
insufficient garrison, and the latter without any, and Fort Mon- 
roe, Hampton Roads, without a sufficient garrison. In my 
opinion all these works should immediately be so garrisoned as 
to make any attempt to take any one of them, by surprise or 
coiipde main, ridiculous. 

" With an army, faithful to its allegiance and the navy probably 
equally so, and with a federal executive for the next twelve 
months of firmness and moderation, which the country has a 
right to expect — moderation being an element of power, not less 
than firmness — there is good reason to hope that the danger of 
secession may be made to pass away without one conflict of 
arms, one execution or one arrest for treason." 

Gentlemen, lieut. general Scott knew Avell, we all know, that 
"what he recommended Mr. Buchanan to do an honest executive 
might have done. Again and again in the history of our country 
have attempts been made to resist the execution of the laws, and 
again and again has the federal government triumphantly vindi- 
cated its supremacy. 

The first armed rebellion Avas that headed by Shay in Massa- 
chusetts in the Winter of 1787. The rebels attempted to seize 
the arsenal, and were met with cannon that killed three 
and wounded another of their number, and the state militia, un- 
der the command of Gen. Lincoln routed their forces, taking 
many prisoners, and peace was restored, not by any compromise 
but by the enforcement of the laws. 



25 

As a Lincoln suppressed the first rebellion, so will a Lincoln 
suppress the last. 

You will readily call to mind other similar occasions, where the 
federal government by prompt action maintained its supremacy 
unimpaired. 

Next came the whiskey rebellion in Pennsylvania during the 
administration of Washington, to suppress which the president 
called out fifteen thousand men from three different states led 
by their governors and general Morgan, whom Washington at 
first proposed himself to accompany across the Alleghanies. 

Next president Jefferson crushed in the bud the opening con- 
spiracy of Aaron Burr. 

President Madison during the war of 1816, when doubts were 
entertained of the loyalty of the Hartford conventionists, who 
were falsely reported to be in correspondence with the enemy, 
stationed major Jessup, of Kentucky, at Hartford with a regi- 
ment to suppress any sudden outbreak. Gen. Jackson, about 
the same time in New Orleans, proclaimed martial law in conse- 
quence of attempts by the civil authorities to embarrass the 
necessary measures of defence. 

President Jackson, in 1832, repressed by the arm of general 
Scott, and amid the hearty applause of the nation, the defiant 
nullification of South Carolina, and president Tyler, in 1843, 
with the approval of his secretary, Mr. John 0. Calhoun, sent 
United States troops to Rhode Island to suppress the state revo- 
lution organized by a majority ot the people of the state, but in 
violation of the existing state constitution, under the leadership 
of governor Thomas W. Doi'r. 

When in 1860 general Scott, in advance of any outbreak, recom- 
mended president Buchanan to reinforce the forts, instead of re- 
commending active measures of interference, such as his predeces- 
sors whom I have named did not hesitate to take, he simply asked 
of the president to do what any intelligent school boy could see 
was absolutely proper and essential — and what he could accom- 
plish by a single word. Mr. Buchanan guided by his secretary of 
war, the traitor and thief John B. Floyd, refused to order the re- 
inforcement of the fortresses ; all the forts named by general 
Scott, excepting fort Pickens, were seized by the confederates ; 



26 

and on the fact of their quiet possession, and the aid and com- 
fort thus given to the rebels by the federal cabinet, was based 
the secession of the traitorous states and the formation of the new 
confederacy. 

The fact thus becomes clear as day, that not simply all the 
strength the rebel confederacy originally possessed but its very 
organization and existence, were due not to the people of the 
South, on whom without their sanction it was precipitated, nor to 
the leaders, skillful as they may have been, who had neither arms 
nor armies to overpower the government, but they were due to 
the federal executive and his advisers of the cabinet. This fact 
is so interesting as a matter of history, it is so important to a 
right understanding of the whole subject, and bears so clearly 
upon the question, what is our duty as citizens and what the 
policy of our government, as regards the tolerance or suppression 
of this rebellion, that you will allow me to quote one authority 
upon the point from among the rebels themselves. 

The Richmond Examiner in an elaborate eulogy of Floyd, who 
in the extent and infamy of his treachery certainly excelled his 
fellow traitors in the cabinet, makes this plain avowal. " All who 
have attended to the developments of the last three months and 
knew aught of the movements of the Buchanan administration up 
to the time of Floyd's resignation, will justify the assertion that 
the southern confederacy would not and could not be in ex- 
istence at this hour, but for the action of the late secretary of 
war. 

" The plan invented by general Scott to stop secession was like 
all campaigns devised by him, very able in its details and nearly 
certain of general success. The Southern states are full of arse- 
nals and forts commanding their rivers and strategic points : 
general Scott desired to transfer the army of the United States 
to these forts as speedily and as quietly as possible. The 
Southern states could not cut off communication between the 
government and the fortresses without a great fleet, which they 
can not build for years ; or take them by land without one hun- 
dred thousand men, many hundred millions of dollars, several 
campaigns, and many a bloody siege. Had Scott been able to 



27 

have got these forts in the condition he desired them to be, the 
southern confederacy woukl not now exist." 

Such is the truth fairly stated by the Richmond ^a^ammer, in 
the interest of the rebels. The union has been severed, not by 
violence from without, but by treachery within. It has been 
convulsed from its centre to its circumference, not from any in- 
ternal weakness in our federal system, but by the infernal vil- 
lainy of our federal rulers. 

Traitors have betrayed the union, traitors have betrayed our 
forts ; and the betrayal no more proves moral weakness in the 
one case than it does material weakness in the other. There is 
no fortification so impregnable but that a traitorous governor 
may yield it without a blow — neither is there any government 
on God's earth, that secret treachery may not enfeeble or tempo- 
rarily overthrow. 

" If," said Webster, " those appointed to defend the castle 
shall betray it, woe betide those within. Let us hope," he add- 
ed, and how vain the hope as regards ourselves ! " that we shall 
never see the time when the government shall be found in oppo- 
sition to the constitution, and whun the guardians of the union 
shall become its betrayers." 

I do not mean to say, gentlemen, that president Buchanan, 
who, at the close of his administration partially redeemed its 
character, by calling to his counsels those brave men and true 
patriots, Mr. Holt and general Dix, was personally privy to the 
designs of the f^ilse secretaries whom they replaced : but it is 
nevertheless true that he is the man who, under the constitution 
is directly responsible to the American people for the acts of 
his administration. 

In his position timidity was treason and inaction was crime. 
He alone could execute the laws, he had the power to execute 
them, and he did not execute them ; and for the simple want of 
their non-execution the country drifted rapidly towards destruc- 
tion. This was a case which the founders of our republic had 
not anticipated. As Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, aptly said, "the 
constitution provided against every probable vacancy in the 
office of president, but did not provide for utter imbecility." 
I am aware that Mr. Buchanan's friends attribute his conduct 



28 

in the whole matter to an amiable credulity and a humane desire 
to avoid the shedding of a drop of blood. I am sure that none 
of us would wish to deprive him of whatever benefit he may de- 
rive from the plea of virtuous motives, but allowing them all 
the force they are entitled to, we must still exclaim : 
" Curse on his virtues, they've undone his country !" 

For no other of the confederates in this great villainy will the 
candid historian venture with success, the apology of mental im- 
becility or moral cowardice. They are men who make the boast 
that for long years it has been the aimof tlieir existence to over- 
throw, not by open and honorable opposition, but secretly, trai- 
torously and by subornation ot treason, the most benignant 
government in the world, and one to which they were bound by 
solemn oaths and by sacred honor. They are men who, pretend- 
ing to be gentlemen, have made conspiracy a trade and perjury 
a habit. They have blended professions of patriotism with the 
practice of treason, linked the duties of a senator with the posi- 
tion of a spy, and made a seat in the cabinet the office of a thief. 
With a refinement of meanness that could belong to no chivalry 
but that of slaveholding, and would be practised by no knights 
save those of " the golden circle," they have to the last moment 
drawn their official salaries from the nation they were betraying ; 
they have perfected their schemes of plunder in the very capital 
which they were seeking to cripple, and beneath the folds of the 
flag that they were swearing to support and plotting to humble. 
They are men in brief — for the subject is a revolting one — avIio, 
imitating Judas and rivalling Arnold, have made their daily life 
simply and purely a clail}^ lie. 

Did time permit me, I would like briefly to refer to the national 
events that, following in quick succession, liave interrupted what 
Mr. Seward happily calls " the majestic march of our national 
progress ;" the successive seizure of Southern forts in obedi- 
ence to telegrams from the senate chamber, the spread of 
Southern treason like the wild fire of the prairies, the consterna- 
tion of the people, the apathy of the executive, the plot to seize 
the capitol, intended to be executed in January and repeatedly 
postponed till the attempt involved too serious danger, the sys- 
tematic efforts in the departments of the treasury, of the interior, 



29 

of war, and I fear also, of the navy, to cripple the United States, 
to strengthen the rebels, and to close the term of the administra- 
tion by a coitp d'etat, that should give to the new confederacy the 
power and the prestige of the old government, and the prepara- 
tions made by northern confederates whom the rebels had been 
taught to believe represented the great northern democracy, for 
assisting the plot and joining at the right moment in a general 
revolution. 

Lost themselves to a sense of honor, they ceased to believe in 
its existence at the North. They seem to have been unable to 
distinguish between a defence of the constitutional rights of 
slaveholders within the union and under the constitution, and a 
war in behalf of slavery for the severance of the union, the 
overthrow of the constitution, the desecration of our flag, and 
the humiliation of our country. Then came the interruption of 
their plans by the premature discovery of the theft of the In- 
dian bonds and other villanies, compelling the retirement of the 
traitorous secretaries Cobb, Thompson and Floyd : the advent 
of Holt and Dix reviving the hopes of the nation, and the im. 
mortal order of the latter, which rung like a trumpet through 
the land, " If any man shall attempt to pull down the national 
flag shoot him on the spot." 

Then came the ofiicial announcement to the country, by the 
counting of the electoral votes, of the people's choice, next the 
safe arrival of Mr. Lincoln in Washington, unharmed by the as- 
sassins who had sworn to take his life ; then the inauguration, 
simple and imposing, the oath administered by the chief jus- 
tice of the United States, and the quiet transfer of such rem- 
nants of the federal property as had not been stolen from the 
people under the retiring administration. 

A month of apparent inaction on the part of the new admin- 
istration, engaged in disentangling the web of treachery, and 
learning how much of treason lingered in the departments — a 
month of active preparation by the rebel confederates, and we 
began to hear the bitter taunts of England at the spiritless 
people of the great North who were being driven to dissolution 
and infamy without an effort at resistance, and relinquishing 



30 

tlieir nationality to a rebellion without striking a blow in its de- 
fence. 

We had a brief foretaste of the ignominy tliat awaits a nation 
which basely surrenders its integrity and its independence, and 
we heard the prelude of the shout that would greet the downfall 
of the union, and the epitaph that should record : 

* * " But yesterday it might 
Have stood against the world ; now lies it there 
And none so poor to do it reverence." 

Assured of the integrity and patriotism of the President and 
the wisdom of his cabinet, the North waited as only a brave 
people, conscious of their strength and of the justice of their 
cause could afford to wait. The strength of the government was 
gradually developed, the war and navy departments began to 
exhibit signs of life — and the great statesman of the West, who 
sacrificing political ambition and personal preferences, had con- 
sented to preside over a depleted Treasury, renewed the miracle 
attributed by Webster to Alexander Hamilton : "He smote the 
rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue 
gushed forth. He touched the dead body of the public credit, 
and it sprang upon its feet." 

Desperate as our situation seemed, capitalists demanded no 
other security than the name of Chase, and when he asked for a 
loan of eight millions, more than thirty millions were instantly 
offered. 

Gentlemen, I have not time to dwell on the attack onSumpter, 
the attack of ten thousand men on one hundred men, and the ill- 
judged boast of Governor Pickens that they had humbled the 
star-spangled banner for the first time in seventy years. They 
themselves by that act and that boast initiated an irresistible 
conflict that will hardly cease till the stars and stripes again float 
in their beauty from every fortress in our land. 

That bombardment, as was remarked by one of the Judges of the 
supreme court, " blew all the plots ot the traitors into the air, 
and inaugurated a change in the sentiment of th? country that 
seemed all but miraculous." It awoke the deep love of country 
which had slumbered beneath the platforms of party and com- 



31 

mercial interest. It ended at once the absurd cry of " no coer- 
cion," as applicable to a goverjiment in enforcing its laws, and 
protecting its existence. The rebels by that act closed the door 
of compromise and reconciliation which had thus far been kept 
open. They rejected the appeal to a convention of the American 
people, to which the president in his inaugural had assented — 
they selected instead the arbitrament of force, the great trial by 
battle. They struck at the very heart of the nation when they 
sought to humble the flag of our union that had protected them 
from infancy, and which from childhood we have loved. They 
themselves inaugurated war. They imposed upon us the most 
sacred duty that can devolve ur on a people of protecting their 
nationality, and the world that had wondered at a forbearance 
which they could not understand, now Vs^ondered again at the 
spontaneous uprising of a mighty nation. 

The threatened attack on Washington, the disloyalty of Balti- 
more, the cutting off of all communication by railroad and tele- 
graph between the national capital and the great North, com- 
pleted the work begun at Sumyjter. 

Party lines grew faint and vanished as completely as though they 
had never existed. Washington has been described as leaning 
in the darkest hour of the revolution, with one arm resting on 
Massachusetts, and the other on North Carolina. The faithless- 
ness of the latter to her historic memories, prevents the parallel 
being now complete, but we may say of Lincoln what can be 
said of no other president since Washington, that in this dark 
hour he rests with one great arm upon his political friends, and 
the other on his political opponents, and that, as he looks abroad 
over the country whose destinies ore in his keeping, he sees 
neither republicans, nor democrats — ^i either nativists, nor 
aliens — he sees but two classes, loyal citizens on the one side, 
and traitors on the other. 

The feeling exhibited throughout the loyal states is not as 
some Europeans have supposed, an ebullition of enthusiasm, 
based upon sudden and evanescent passion, but the expression of 
a profound conviction gradually forced upon them by a long 
train of facts that culminated at Sumpter, that both duty and 



liOiior imperatively demand that they shall crush this gigantic 
conspiracy against the integrity of the country. 

It was this that, within six weeks, called forth, as if by magic, 
an army of 200 000 men converting our cities into camaps and making 
I he repression of this rebellion the one great business of the 
American people. 

The scene has been one which, day by day, has thrdled us 
with emotion, one upon wliich the Bancroft and the Motley of 
the next century will linger with admiration. 

Massachussetts first in the field, as in the olden days of trial, 
shedding the first blood at Baltimore, first to occupy and protect 
the capital, where her great senator was stricken down, against 
the traitors, whose hatred to him foreshadowed their hatred to- 
wards the American constitution, of which he had been the faith- 
ful and eloquent expounder. 

New York, " herself the noblest eulogium on the union," fol- 
lowing close behind with her gallant Seventh, reaching Washing- 
ton by a march already famous, and insuring by their presence 
the safety of the Capital. The New England states, Pennsyl- 
vania and the great west, pouring in their quotas with generous 
rivalry, and our foreign population rising instantly to the gran- 
deur of the occasion, and hastening to the defence of their 
adopted country, present features of strength in the American 
republic of which the most ardent of its eulogists had liardly 
dreamed. 

If any man has regarded our large foreign element as one that 
threatened danger to the perpetuity of popular institutions, let 
him glance at the regiments now gathering to battle in their be. 
half. He will find among them men who have fought for free- 
dom in other lands, and who have pined for their love of it in 
continental dungeons. He will find scholars from far-fimicd uni- 
versities, and graduates of the military schools of Europe who 
have emerged from positions in which they were gaining an in- 
dependency to proffer to their country their dear bought expe- 
rience, and guide and instruct the military ardour that sweeps like 
a whirlwind over the land. Call the roll of nationalities and you 
will have responses from England and Ireland,, Scotland and 
Wales, from natives of catholic France and protestant Germany 



33 

— you will have replies from Poles who yet dream of an inde- 
pendent Poland, from Hungarians in wliose ears still lingers the 
eloquence of Kossuth, from Italians rejoicing in a regenerated 
Italy, and who are fresh from executing the policy of the lamented 
Cavour and from fighting by the side of Garibaldi. Every peo, 
pie of Christendom has its representatives in the army of the 
union that has gone forth to fight for national unity, national in- 
dependence and the rights of human nature, against the confede- 
rated forces of slavery and treason. 

In this crisis of our national history it is natural that we should 
regard with interest the view taken of our course by the great 
powers of Europe, and especially by that country, with which, 
as colonies, we were so long connected, and which, despite the 
two wars that have been waged between us, we are accustomed 
to remember as our mother-land. Mingled with our Dutch and 
Huguenot ancestry, a very large proportion of the older families 
of America trace their descent from England, and many who do 
not are yet connected with her by no common ties. For myself, 
I may say that I have always entertained for her people an 
hereditary feeling of attachment, from the fact that my Huguenot 
ancestors, when they fled from Rochelle after the revocation by 
Louis XIV. of the edict of Nantz, found upon her soil a wel- 
come and a home : and that one of them volunteering for King 
William against James II., shed his blood for English freedom at 
the battle of the Boyne, that great era in English history, ending, 
as we hope forever her civil wars, from which dates the estab- 
lishment on a firm basis, of the unity, the strength and the world- 
wide dominion of the British empire. Such memories, and 
doubtless, my countrymen, you have many such, descend from 
father to son undimmed by national revolutions. They inspire 
sentiments of affection and kinship, that like family heir-looms 
gather new value from the lapse of time, and instead of fading 
as years and centuries roll by, seem the more sacred and im- 
perishable from the thought of the generations by whom they 
have been cherished and who have each in turn added a link 
to the chain of association. 

The recent visit of the prince of Wales, coming to us as the 
representative of the British nation, characterized, as it was, by 



34 

the most graceful courtesy and cordiality on his part, and by the 
heartiest welcome upon ours, with the single exception of the 
rude treatment he met at Richmond — now the head-quarters of 
the rebels — had accomplished what no diplomacy could have 
eifected. It seemed to have blotted out the last lingering rem- 
nrait of ill-feeling, and left on this side the Atlantic at least, the 
belief that henceforth there was a firm alliance between Eng- 
land and America, not based on treaty stipulations, but upon that 
heartfelt cordiality which springs from mutual regard, and from 
a common devotion to the great principles of right which belong 
to the institutions of both countries and which their example is 
recommending to the world ; nor should we overlook the belief 
cherished by many thoughtful men that if in the distant future 
England should be set upon by the despotisms of Europe, and 
should require the aid of her American daughter to save her 
froiu annihihition, that aid would be promptly, effectively and 
cordially given. 

It is with profound regret that we hav^e seen that friendly feel- 
ing suddenly converted into one of intense and bitter disappoint- 
ment by the conduct and tone of the English government and 
the ill-judged comments of the English press. 

The election of Mr. Lincoln for the first time entitled to the 
control of the federal government, a party with whose political 
principles the English people were supposed to sympathize. By 
a scheme of treachery unparalleled in baseness, a few of the 
defeated faction holding office in the cabinet, in congress, in the 
army and in the navy, conspire together to betray the forts 
arsenals and other property of the government into the hands of 
their confederates, with the view of destroying the union, and 
erecting upon its ruins a Southern confederacy, of which slavery 
is to be the grand permanent and distinguishing characteristic. 
They accomplish the seizure of the public property without dif- 
ficulty, for they themselves were entrusted with its guardianship, 
and they proceed to develop the great conspiracy and organize 
the rebel government, while the loyal citizens of the United 
States are helplessly compelled to await the inauguration of the 
new president. The 4th of March arrives at last, Mr. Lincoln 
takes the oath to maintain the constitution and the laws, and 



35 

when in obedience to that oath he orders the rebels to dispers( 
and calls upon the country for assistance, the loyal states, as on 
man, prepare to crush the conspiracy and restore the integrity an 
the honor of the nation. Neither from England nor from an 
foreign power have we asked or would we accept assistance i 
regulating our own household, but from England, of all the statt 
of the world, we thought we had a right to expect a ready syn 
pathy, and that moral support which is given by the countenanc 
of a great nation. 

The Southern rebels also counted upon the support of Englanc 
on the simple ground that her interest in cotton would inclin 
her to their side, but we, although well aware of the demoralizin 
effect of interest uj^on national principles, still believed it in 
possible that the British government could consent from pecun 
ary motives to look with complacency on the progress of a rebe 
lion whose only strength was gained by treachery, and whic 
was avowedly prosecuted for the maintenance of a system whic 
England herself had taught the world to regard with abhorrenct 
In thus believing, we were confirmed by the tone of the Englis 
press when the insurrection first began, one of the ablest repr( 
sentatives of which indignantly declared in substance that Mai 
Chester and Birmingham would be the first to reject as an insul 
the idea that they were to be moved from their position by pi 
cuniary appeals, and that it any British cabinet should sacrific 
the anti-slavery principles of the nation to the question of co 
ton, England would lose, and deservedly lose, her place at th 
council table of Europe. 

The exclamation of Lord John Russell in reply to a questio 
as to the position of England, " For God's sake let us keep or 
of it," was followed by what is termed a proclamation of neutra 
ity in which British subjects are forbidden to render assistanc 
to either the United States on the one hand, or the state 
calling themselves the Confederate States on the other, both ( 
which parties are recognized by the proclamation as " bell 
gerents." 

The British government is accustomed to preserve an attitud 
of neutrality towards contending nations, but it would seem the 
neutrality does not so far interfere with the sympathies and frc( 



36 

flom of its subjects as to comjDel it to issue proclamations against 
Irishmen enlisting with Francis Joseph, or Englishmen fighting 
for Victor Emanuel and Garibaldi. 

The proclamation in this case is so warmly eulogized by the 
British press as precisely the proclamation demanded by the 
crisis, they profess such profound astonishment that the 
American people are not satisfied with it, and rate so severely 
Mr. Cassius M. Clay for expressing with western, bluntness his 
frank surprise, that I will dwell for a moment on what seems to 
be its meaning and effect. 

What has the proclamation effected ? How did we stand be- 
fore it was issued, and how do we stand now ? 

In the case of the United States, the laws of England and its 
treaty stipulations with our government already forbade its sub- 
jects from engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow our institu- 
tions. The proclamation, therefore, in forbidding English sub- 
jects to fight in the service of the rebels against the United 
States, simply declared the law as it was already understood ; 
while in forbidding Englishmen to fight for the United States 
against the rebels, it intervened to change the existing practice, 
to revive the almost obsolete act of Geo. III. forbidding Eng- 
lish subjects from engaging in foreign service without the royal 
consent, which had slumbered in regard to Austria and Italy, for 
the purpose of forbidding Englishmen from assisting to main- 
tain in the United States constitutional order against conspira- 
cy and rebellion, and the cause of freedom against chattel slavery. 
The first effect of the proclamation, therefore, was to change 
the position in which England and Englishmen stood to the Uni- 
ted States, to the disadvantage of the latter. Before the procla- 
mation, for an Englishman to serve the United States govern- 
ment in maintaining its integrity was regarded honourable ; after 
the proclamation such service became a crime. The proclam-a- 
tion makes it an offence now for an Englishman to fight for the 
government at Washington as great as it was for Englishmen 
before the proclamation to fight for the rebels of Montgomery. 
It thus, in a moral view, lowered the American government to 
the level of the rebel confederacy, and in the next place, it pro- 
ceeded, in an international view, to place the rebel confederacy 



37 

on a par with the American government by recognizing them, 
not as rebels and insurgents to be dealt with by our government 
as our constitution and laws should determine, but as a belligerent 
power, to be classed with the United States (of which they were 
but a rebellious fraction), and equally entitled with the United 
States to the rights of belligerents under the law of nations. 

No ingenuity can blind us to the^e facts : — Before the procla- 
mation, to support our government was an honorable ojffice for 
the subjects of Great Britain, and the rebels were insurgents 
with no rights save under the American constitution. After the 
proclamation for an Englishman to serve the United States is a 
crime and the rebels are elevated into a belligerent power — and 
this intervention of England, depriving us of a support which her 
practice permitted, and giving the rebels a status and right they 
did not possess, we are coolly told is neutrality. Dr. Johnson in 
his famous letter gave us a sketch of a Chesterfieldean patron 
seeing a rnan struggling for life in the water, and when he reach- 
ed ground encumbering him with help. Lord John has taught 
us the meaning of British neutrality towards a nation supposed 
to be in like condition. Let us trust that the English people 
will not endorse the defiuition. 

What would England have said to such a proclamation of neu- 
trality from us in her domestic troubles in Canada, in Ireland or 
in India ? What would the English people have thought of a 
state paper from Washington, declaring it the sovereign will of 
the people of the United States to remain perfectly neutral in 
the contest being waged in Hindostan between the British gov- 
ernment on the one side and the Mogul dynasty on the other, and 
forbidding American citizens to enter the service of either of 
the said belligerents. What would they have thought of the 
American president intimating with cold etiquette that it was a 
matter of profound indifference to this government which of the 
belligerents should be victorious, the king of Oude and Nana 
Sahib, or Lord Canning and the immortal Havelock. Or is it 
that the British have become so enamored of rebellion, aye and 
of treachery too among their sepoys, that they thus court our 
great mogul and his fellow traitors of Montgomery ? 

This Queen's proclamation strikes not simply at the mcrrJ 



38 

position of our government, but according to the English press 
it strikes also at our right to execute our own laws against piracy ; 
and we are told by the London Times that if we venture to hang 
under these laws, a pirate who is licensed to plunder and mur- 
der by Jefferson Davis's letters of marquo, now endorsed by the 
sovereigns of England and France, it wiil be regarded as an 
outrage by the civilized world ; and this gentle intimation comes 
to us from a nation who are hardly recovered from the effects of 
a rebellion, to end which, without staying to ask the opinion 
of the world, they blew their rebels from the guns. 

It was intimated that the British cabinet were puzzled how to 
act in regard to the United States on the one hand, and her rebel 
conspirators on the other, and that after a careful search for pre- 
cedents, one was found in the royal proclamation touching the 
war between G-reece and Turkey, and that on that was based the 
proclamation which has so displeased and wounded the American 
people. 

It could not have escaped the cabinet in their search for pre- 
cedents, for we know with what tlioroughness such searches are 
mnde, that a very similar state of things existed but a few j^ears 
since between Great Britain and the United States, when the in- 
tegrity and honour of the British empire were assailed by her 
Canadian colonists, and she had occab.on to learn what in the 
oi)inion of the United States constitutes the duties of neutrality 
towards a friendly nation. Unsuccessful rebellions are soon for- 
gotten, and perhaps many Englishmen may be surprised on being 
told that the Canadian rebellion w^as so deeply seated and so 
widely spread, as seriously to threaten the crown with the loss 
of the Canadas. Mr. Leader declared in Parliament that all the 
English government could do, would be to subjugate and hold 
the principal cities, leaving the country occupied by rebels. The 
number of British troops under Sir John Colbourne was only 
20,000, while the rebels are said to have had 14,000 at Montreal, 
4000 at Napiersville, and thousands more in arms in different 
parts of the Canadas, fierce with indignation at the murder of a 
party of patriots by Indians in the employ of the British govern- 
ment. 

In November '3Y two battles were fought between the British 



39 

and the rebels, the one at St. Dennis, and the other at St.Charles, 
which was taken from a force of 3,000 Canadians of whom 200 
were killed and 30 wounded. 

In December Mackenzie, the head rebel, who seems to have 
been the prototype of Davis, organized a provisional government, 
and assuming the right to dispose of " ten millions of acres of 
land, fair and fertile," took possession of Montgomery House near 
Toronto, with a band of insurgents, and sent a demand to Sir 
Francis B. Head to dissolve the provincial parHament, and to 
leave Toronto within fifteen days. 

Then came Lord Gosford's proclamation at Quebec, declaring 
martial law, and denouncing the conspiracy and rebellion, and on 
the 8th of January 1838 came the first proclamation from presi- 
dent Van Buren. After reciting the efforts made by him and by 
the governors of New York and Vermont to prevent any unlaw- 
ful interference on the part of our citizens in the contest unfortun- 
ately commenced in the British provinces, and that notwithstand - 
ing the presence of the civil officers of the United States who by 
his direction had visited the scenes of commotion, arms and amu- 
nition had been procured by the insurgents, in the United States, 
the proclamation proceeded : 

" Now, therefore, to the end that the authority of the laws may 
be maintained and the faith of treaties observed, I, Martin Van 
Buren, do most earnestly exhort all citizens of the United States 
who have violated their duties to ret'urn peaceably to their re- 
spective homes, and I hereby warn them that any persons loho 
shall compromise the neutrality of this government by interfering in 
an unlaioful manner with the affairs of the neighboring British 
provinces will render themselves liable to arrest and punishment 
under the laws of the United States," &c., &c. 

At the request of Lord Durham, Mr. Van Buren, had directed 
our commanding officer on Lake Ontario to co-operate in any 
measures which might be suggested by Lord Durham for rooting 
out the band of pirates who had their quarters among " the 
thousand isles," without the slightest regard to the official pro- 
clamation of their chief, Mr. William Johnson, holding a commis- 
sion from the patriot government, that the patriots would care- 
fully respect neutral waters and the rights of all citizens of the 
United States. 



40 

On the 21st November, 1838, president Van Buren issued a 
second proclamation, calling upon the misguided and deluded 
persons to abandon projects dangerous to their own country, 
fatal to those whom they profess a desire to relieve, impractica- 
ble of execution without foreign aid, which they cannot rationally 
expect to obtain, and giving rise to imputations, however un- 
founded, against the honor and good faith of their own govern- 
ment. 

The proclamation further called upon " every officer, civil and 
military, and upon every citizen, by the veneration due by all 
freemen to the laws which they have assisted to enact for their 
own government, by his regard for the honour and good faith of 
his country, by his love of honour and respect for that sacred code 
of laws by which national intercourse is regulated, to use every 
power to arrest for trial and punishment every offender against 
the laws providing for the performance of our obhgations to the 
other powers of the world." 

On the 4th of December, 1838, the president, in his message to 
congress, declared, " If an insurrection existed in Canada the 
amicable disposition of the United States, as well as their duty to 
themselves, would lead them to maintain a strict neutrality, and 
to restrain its citizens from all violation of the laws which have 
been passed for its enforcement. But the government recognises 
a still higher obligation to repress all attempts on the part of its 
citizens to disturb the peace of a country where order prevails 
or has been re-established." 

Such was the neutrality on the part of the United States 
towards Great Britain. It recognized the rebels of Canada 
not as belligerents, but as insurgents, and it enforced its neu- 
trality not by forbidding its citizens to assist Great Britain to 
maintain its authority against the insurgents, but by forbidding 
them to interfere in an unlaiuful manner with the affairs of the 
provinces. 

It needs no intimate knowledge of international law, no study 
of Grotius, or Puffendorf, or Vattel, or Wheaton, no definitions 
of the rights of belligerents and privateers from the Consolato 
del Mare, from Lampredi, Gahani, Moser or Hiibner, to enable us 
to appreciate the Avide difference between the neutrality wo 



41 

practiced towards England and lier rebels, and that whicli Eng- 
land lias inaugurated against us ; and no refinement of reason- 
ing, nor subtle glosses indulged in by the English press, have 
at all blinded the American people to the unfriendly character 
of this royal proclamation. 

The recognition of the independence of the southern confed- 
eracy is a matter in the discretion of England, and of all foreign 
nations. When this independence is established as a matter of 
fact we expect it to be recognized, but England does not so re- 
cognize it. She recognizes the confederacy as simply struggling 
for independence as were the insurgents in Canada, and pend- 
ing the struggle she volunteers, under professions of neutrality 
to ignore our constitutional right to subdue them, and to recog- 
nize their rebellion as lawful war. Bound to us by treaty 
stipulations, she elevates them to an equality of position as 
regards belligerent rights under the law of nations. She 
places their usurped government, based on treachery and slave- 
ry, on a par with that founded by Washington and his associ- 
ates on the broad consent of the American people. She intro- 
duces Jefferson Davis and his confederates to a limited extent 
into the family of nations, endorses the licenses given by them to 
pirates whose brutal cupidity is stimulated by bribes of blood 
money — twenty dollars for every murdered American ! and 
transforms them into letters of marque which the ships of all na- 
tions are bound to recognize, respect and obey. 

Had she treated them as insurgents they would have had no 
other rights on the sea than had Bill Johnson, the pirate of the 
St. Lawrence. Having proclaimed them belligerents she has 
given them a commission not simply to capture American prop- 
erty in American vessels, but to capture on the high seas Amer- 
ican property on board of whatever vessel it may be found, and 
to carry the neutral vessel and cargo into a belligerent port fo;' 
further examination. She recognizes the right of the men who 
have robbed our treasury, betrayed our forts and filched our 
navy yards and arsenals to establish prize courts to decide upon 
the lawfulness of captures made by their commissioned cruisers, 
and brought into court for adjudication, and the title to be given 
by Davis's courts is to be held valid by the lav/ of nations. 



42 

This is what the proclamation of neutrality really means. This is 
the neutrality which England has inaugurated and which France 
has adopted ; and those two great powers who recently declared 
in the congress at Paris that jorivateering is and shall remain 
abolished, — by royal and imperial proclamation have countersign- 
ed letters of marque for the destruction of American ships, and 
which threaten with spoliation the commerce of the world. The 
aim and effect of the British proclamation seems to us so clearly 
unfriendly and injurious, that it is hardly worth while to note 
the discourtesy of adopting such a policy, and giving it a defi- 
nite and irreversible shape in advance of the arrival of Mr. Ad- 
ams, without allowing us the opportunity to offer a word of 
explanation or remonstrance. Mr. Adams reached Liverpool 
the 13th of Ma}". The next day the proclamation was printed 
in London. 

The United States by their neutrality broke the back of the 
Canadian rebellion, dashed the hopes cherished by the rebels ot 
effective American sympathy, in good faith assisted the British 
government in maintaining its autliority, and restoring order, 
and thus materially diminished the cost of treasure and of life at 
wdiich alone their subjection could have been accomplished. 

The British government by their neutrality have made our 
task far more difficult, apart from the injury we may anticipate 
from the fleet of privateers whose letters are so respectably 
countersigned. But we learn from this proclamation one les- 
son, that will be perhaps worth all that it shall cost us : we 
learn the treatment we may expect, if we fail to maintain our na 
tional integrity and the honour of our flag. 

If a mere supposition that the rebels of Montgomery are likel}^ 
to be successful, can in a moment dash from the memory of the 
English government all recollection of past friendship, and induce 
her in our moment of trial to condescend to a course so different 
from that we had pursued towards her ; what treatment may 
we not expect from her, and from every other European cabinet, 
if we ourselves by our conduct admit that we are powerless at 
home ? How w^ill we be treated abroad, if we yield to the threats 
of a fraction of our oAvn population ? What will be our standing 
among nations if, consenting to separation, we lose nearly half of 



43 

our territory, and two-thirds of our Atlantic seaboard, and des- 
cend to the position of a third rate power ? Or what respect will 
be paid us, if to maintain our territory we compromise with rebeh 
lion ; if we yield at the cannon's mouth, what the people have 
deliberately refused at the polls •, if we teach the world by such 
an example that we may be bullied with success, and that when 
we resist on principle unreasonable demands, it is only necessary 
to humble our flag, and to threaten Washington, to induce us 
ignominously to submit? 

Let us discard all reliance upon other help than that of God, 
a right cause and a strong arm, and let us recognize the stub 
born fact that " the government or nation that fails to protect 
itself against foes, whether foreign or domestic, deserves to perislf 
ingloriously."* 

Before leaving the question of England's neutrahty, I think 
we should distinguish between the hasty action of the British 
cabinet and the deliberate conviction of the British people. 

That the heart of that great nation is sound, and that as soon 
as they understand the motives and manner of this rebellion as 
you understand them, they will appreciate our position, approve 
our resolution and wish us God speed in our great work of res- 
toring the federal union to its integrity and its great original 
principles of freedom, I cannot, I will not doubt. 

Already their cabinet has partially atoned for the first pro- 
clamation by an order that will prevent the privateers of Davis 
from entering British ports, and both the government and the 
people must soon recognise the fact that we have the ability and 
the will to crush this rebellion and maintain our integrity, how- 
ever long the struggle, however great the cost ; and that we no 
more recognise the right of England nor of Europe to dictate to 
us in this matter, than England would have recognized our right 
to interfere between her and Nana Sahib. The material interests 
based on cotton must yield to the national and moral duties that 
to-day devolve upon the American people, in determining, per- 
haps for untold ages, the destiny of the American continent. 

The EngUsh people will see that our resolve to crush the con- 

* Guetauo Filangieri. 



44 

spiracy for the establishment of a slave empire, is not based on 
any evanescent burst of enthusiasm, but on the most sober calcu- 
lations of honor, duty, bale ty and economy ; and that it is the true 
interest of England, her pecuniary, her political and her moral 
interest, that the war should be as brief as possible, that the re- 
bels may no longer be deluded into the belief that any true Eng- 
lishman who understands the history and the object of tueir rebel- 
lion can regard it with other feelings, than those naturally aroused 
by a policy of fraud, treachery and oppression. 

That the restoration of the integrity of our union is to be ac- 
complished without a vast expenditure of treasure, and perhaps 
of blood, no one anticipates. We all know something of the cost 
of European wars, but we know also our own resources and the 
immense stake for which we will be fighting. Our fathers fought 
for seven years for our national freedom, and the spirit abroad 
throughout our land indicates that their sons, if necessary, will 
fight seven years more to save it from destruction and disgrace. 
Whether the debt incurred for its preservation shall be hun- 
dreds or thousands of millions, it will be a sacred legacy to future 
generations. A debt of five hundred millions, as remarked by 
an English journalist, would leave this nation less severely taxed 
than any nation of Europe. 

If any man supposes that this republic can be advantageously 
sundered into two, let him cast his eye upon the map and endea- 
vour to find a natural line to separate the two confederacies. 
The geographical formation of our country indicates that it is 
one : nature has provided no boundary line between the North 
and the South : no river like the Mississippi, no mountain chain 
like the Alleghanies, or the Rocky mountains, running from the 
West to the Atlantic, and forming an Alpine boundary to divide 
vhe sections. On the contrary, the father of waters stretches out 
his great arms to the East and to the West bearing on his bosom 
to the gulf, the generous products of the valleys which they fer- 
tilize, and carrying back in their place the cotton, rice and sugar 
of our Southern borders, and imports from foreign climes. 

The Mississippi, source and channel of prosperity to North and 
South alike in every mile of its progress : on the West to Mmuo- 



45 

sota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana ; on the East to 
Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, pro- 
clnims to the citizens of the immense region which it waters 
through thousands of miles in extent, from North to South, 
and East to West, that our country is one and indivisible. 

Our duty to the South forbids our acquiescence in this rebel- 
lion, for it would reverse the American policy for the last half 
century, and reconsign to foreign invasion, to anarchy and ruin, 
the immense territories which we have rescued from European 
sway, and united as parts of our great nation. 

Look back to the olden time and see what the Southern coun- 
try would again become. Trace the history of Florida from the 
days of Charles V., from the adventures of De Leon and DeSoto, 
the persecution of protestants from France, and the retaliation 
on the murderous Spaniards ; the capture of St. Augustine by Sir 
Francis Drake, the buccaneering inroads of the English, the 
transfer of Florida to the British crown ; its partial settlement 
from Italy and Greece, the privateering exploits in our revolu- 
tion, the capture of Baton Rouge and Pensacola, until its pur- 
chase by our government in 1819. 

Remember that the Spaniards navigated the gulf of Mexico 
for two centuries, without discovering that it was the outlet of 
the great river of the North, a fact which perhaps induces the 
Southern confederates to imagine that we also may be persuaded 
to forget its existence. Look at Louisiana from the days of Law 
and the Mississippi bubble to its cession to Spain in 1762, and its 
retrocession to France in 1800, when we hastened to buy it from 
the First Consul, and you will find nothing in Florida, in Louisiana, 
nor indeed in Texas, to indicate even the first beginning of the 
prosperity which has been so rapidly developed under the foster- 
ing protection of the federal government. 

Let the American union be dismembered, and what is to pre- 
vent foreign powers from re-entering upon our national domain 
from which at such great cost and labour they have been ousted '.' 

An old officer of the French empire writing to the Courrier des 
Etats-Unis, has predicted that in the first place France would 
retake Louisiana, according to ancient treaties, that Spain would 
reclaim Florida, that England perhaps would seek to appropriate 



46 

Oregon, and that Mexico, under foreign protection, would retake 
New Mexico, Texas and California ; or supposing that we should 
consent to tl:c establishment of the so-called Southern confederacy, 
which we know to bo a mere military despotism, what possible gua- 
rantee can we have for peace in. the future, when each state re- 
serves the right to secede at pleasure and enter at will into foreign 
alliances, inaugurating universal chiios and chronic dissolution! 
Even now, M-hile the struggle is being waged, the leading men of 
South Carolina, already sick of tbeii independence before it is ac- 
complished, repudiate republican institutions and sigh for a British 
prince to lend the odour of royalty to the aristocracy which they 
boast — an aristocracy based not upon historic deeds and noble 
heroism, but simply upon the colour of their skins, and their des- 
potic dominion over helpless slaves : — an aristocracy whose wealth 
is invested in human flesh, and whose revenues are col 
lected in the field by the lash, and on the auction block by the 
hammer ! 

Let our union be divided with the view of accomplishing pre- 
sent peace, and not only would the United States fall from her 
position of a first class power to that of a minor republic, with 
a contracted sea-board and a defenseless border but the act 
of separation would inaugurate an exposure to hostilities, — first 
from our new and unfriendly neighbour, and then from every 
foreign power with which one or all of the Southern states might 
choose to form an alliance. Either contingency Avould necessarily 
change our national policv, require the maintenance of a standing 
army, and complicate endlessly our commercial relations. Noio, 
we stand aloof from the quarrels of the rest of the world and can 
devote our energies to the development of our marvellous re. 
sources and the extension of civilization and freedom over the 
American continent ; tlien we should be compelled to an attitude 
of perpetual self-defence to save us from constant entanglement 
in the web of European politics. Already have we had a fore- 
taste of the sort of treatment which Europe will accord to the 
severed fragments of the American republic. 

To maintain the respect of the world we must maintain first 
the integrity of our national territory, and next the integrity of 
our fundamental principles. As for the argument that if the re- 



4T 

bellion is crushed harmony can never be restored, Canada fur- 
nishes the refutation. The bloody feuds of 1838 have hardly left 
a trace to mar the tranquil prosperity which marks the progress 
of that great province. There is reason to believe that the union 
men of the South await but the coming of the federal torces in 
sufficient stength, to show themselves again the cordial supporters 
of the federal government. But even if this were not so, and there 
was reason to fear a long period of distrust and disaffection, the 
fact remains that the interests of the American people impera- 
tively demand that the integrity of the union shall be preserved, 
whether the slavery propagandists of the South like it or like 
it not. 

This is one of those decisive epochs that occur in the history 
of all great nations. One came to our fathers in 1776. Submis- 
sion to usurped authority, or national independence, was the issue : 
and on the day we commemorate they chose the latter ; and the 
force of their example on the world is yet to be determined. 
To day the imperious demand comes from slavery, " submit or be 
destroyed !" Already has a blow been struck by slavery at our 
republic, the force of which reverberates through the world. 
Two hundred millions of debts due from rebels to loyal citizens 
are repudiated, the business of the country is arrested, bank- 
ruptcy stares us in the face ; worse than all, our flag has been 
insulted, our prestige impaired, and, from foreign courts, we have 
received treatment that our American pride can illy brook. 
Honour, interest, self-respect and the highest duty call upon us 
to crush, and crush speedily, the insolent traitors whose secret 
and atrocious perfidy has temporarily crippled us : and while 
we recall the motives that combine to compel us to resist- 
ance, let us not forget the duty which this nation owes to the op- 
pressed race who are the innocent cause of all our troubles, and 
who have no friends to look to but ourselves, to prevent the 
spreading of slavery over every foot of American territory, and 
the waving of the flag of the slave trader over the fearful horrors 
of the middle passage. 

Gentlemen, as in our revolutionary struggle our fathers had to 
contend with the timid and the avaricious, who feared the evils 
of war and continually cried peace I peace ! where there was no 



48 

peace, so may Tve expect to be constantly hampered by declaim- 
crs in favor of compromise. I do not stop to consider the fitness 
of our lending an ear to such a cry until the insult to our flag lias 
been atoned for and until our supremacy is acknowledged, for 
the great mass of the people of the country will be unanimous 
on this point ; they will regard the bare suggestion of treating 
with the rebels whose hands are stained with the blood of the 
sons of Massachusetts, of Ellsworth and of Winthrop, of Greble 
and of Ward, as a personal insult, and will rejily to it as did 
Patrick Henry — "We must fight ! I repeat it, sir, we must fight !" 
The sword is now the only pen with which we can Avrite " peace" 
in enduring characters on the map of America. 

The day of compromise is gone : " that sort of thing," as the 
secretary said, " ended with the fourth of March." We have had 
devices enough for saving the union, devices suggested by the 
men who are now striving to destroy it. 

There is one good old plan provided by the constitution that 
was successfully practiced by Washington and Jackson : we are 
about to try tliat : lot us try it thoroughly ; it is simply the due 
execution of the laws by whatever degree of force the exigency 
may require. If our army of 300,000 men is insufficient, a 
million stand ready to follow them to the field. 

It would be difficult, my countrymen, to exaggerate the solemn 
importance of our national position. A struggle for life and 
death has commenced between freedom and slavery, and on tlie 
event of the struggle depends our national existence. Let us 
falter, let us compromise, let us yield, and the work of our fa- 
thers and the inheritance of our children, our own honor and the 
hopes of the oppressed nationalities of the world will be buried 
in a common grave ! Let us be demoralized by defeat in the 
field, or what is infinitely worse, by submission to rebellion, and 
in foreign laruls ji man will blush and hang his head to declare 
himself an American citizen. A whipped hound should be the 
emblem of the Northern man Avho whimpers for a peace that can 
only be gained by dishonour. 

But let us remember our fathers who, eighty-five years ago, this 
day, made universal freedom and equal right the corner stone of 
this republic ; let us exhibit, as we have begun to do, their stern 



49 

resolve and high devotion in behalf of constitutional freedom, 
and we shall secure for our children and our children's children 
a gigantic and glorious nationality, based upon principles of 
Christian civilization, such as the world has never seen before. 

There is nothing impossible, nothing improbable in our speedy 
realization of a glorious future. 

The seeds of this rebellion have long lurked in our system : for 
years it has been coming to a head, and simply from want of 
proper treatment, it has now burst with angry violence : but the 
pulse of the nation beats cooly and calmly, the partial local in- 
flammation but serves to exhibit the lusty health of the body 
politic, and wheii this rebellion is extinguished, and i-ts cause re- 
moved, we may hope that we are safe from an organized rebel- 
lion for at least a century to come. 

With what speed this rebellion shall be crushed, depends sole- 
ly upon yourselves. Let public feeling lag throughout the land, 
and the war department will lag in Washington. Let us become 
careless and indifferent about the matter, and contractors will 
cheat our soldiers, incompetent officers will expose them to de- 
feat, official indifference will produce general demoralization. 

But let us keep ever in mind the lesson we have so dearly learned 
— that eternal vigilance is the price of Kberty. Let the administra- 
tion and the army feel that their every act is canvassed by ai 
intelligent people, and when approved, greeted by a hearty ap- 
preciation : that every branch of industry awaits the ending of 
the war, and that from every part of the land comes the cry of 
" forward," and the arm of the union at Washington Avill obey the 
heart of the nation, whenever a prayer rises in its behalf, or its 
flag kisses the breeze of heaven. 

Let us with this sleepless vigilance on our part, repose a gene- 
rous confidence in our president who has won the generous ap- 
plause of his democratic opponents, nor scan too impatiently the 
warlike policy of Scott. 

Like all true-hearted and brave veterans he wishes to spare as 
far as possible the blood alike of loyal soldiers and deluded rebels, 
and to carry with the flag of our union not simply the power to 
make it respected but the more glorious attributes that cause it 
to be loved. "Not," to adopt the words of Gov. Andrew, of 



50 

Massachussetts, " to inaugurate a war of sections, not to avenge 
former wrongs, not to perpetuate ancient griefs or memories of 
conflict," will that flag move onwards until it floats again in its 
pride and beauty over Richmond, and Sumpter,and Montgomery, 
and New Orleans : but to indicate the majesty of the people, to 
retain and re-invigorate the institutions of our fathers, to rescue 
from the despotism of traitors the loyal citizens of the South, and 
place all, loyal or rebel, under the protection of a union that is 
essential to the welfare of the whole. 

The eyes of the whole world are thi^ day fixed upon you. To 
Europeans themselves, European questions sink to insignificance 
compared with the American question now to be decided. Rise, 
my countrymen, as did our fathers on the day we celebrate, to 
the majestic grandeur of this question in its two-fold aspect, 
as regards America, and as regards the world. Remember that 
with the failure of the American republic will fall the wisest 
system of republican govrnment which the wisdom of man 
has yet invented, and the hopes of popular freedom cherished 
throughout the globe. 

Let us, standing by our fathers' graves, swear anew and teach 
the oath to our children, that with God's help the American re- 
public, clasping this continent in its embrace, shall stand un- 
moved, though all the powers of slavery, piracy, and European 
jealousy should combine to overthrow it ; that we shall have in 
the future, as we have had in the past, one country, one consti- 
tution, and one destiny; and that when we shall have passed 
from earth and the acts of to-day shall be matter of history, and 
the dark power now seeking our overthrow shall have been itself 
overthrown, our sons may gather strength from our example in 
every contest with despotism that time may have in store to try 
their virtue, and that they may rally under the stars and stripes 
to battle for fi-eedom and the rights of man, with our olden war 
cry. " Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable." 



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